微精选

For OF. Studio’s founders, Valentina Cerrone and Sebastián Andia, the project carries an additional layer of meaning. Both born and raised in the province of Mendoza where the project is located, designing in their native landscape gave them the chance to merge professional ambition with personal memory. This is also their first built work which makes it not only a milestone for the studio, but a kind of homecoming: a monumental gesture rooted in the very same soil that shaped them.

Perched on a hillside overlooking the Andean desert mountains and an oasis below, the house negotiates its site with remarkable sensitivity. Not a single tree was removed during construction, while the earth-toned concrete, developed through meticulous on-site testing, is in perfect harmony with the surrounding rocky terrain. The structure itself seems to rise organically from the slope, while at the same time asserting a new, distinctly architectural identity, which the design team calls “OF. Abstract Nature.” Shaped by the contours of the land, its polygonal footprint, inclined walls and rounded corners recall the defensive geometry of a bastion fort, albeit reimagined as something at once futuristic and primeval.

Organised across two main levels, the house strikes a careful balance between communal gathering and private retreat. On the ground floor, a series of terraces project into the landscape, extending the open-plan living, dining, and kitchen area outwards with floor-to-ceiling patio doors reinforcing the seamless dialogue between inside and out. Elsewhere on this level, a playroom and four bedrooms occupy a more private wing, notionally separated from the communal core by a small courtyard, while the basement accommodates a second playroom alongside a spacious wine cellar.

Above, a sweeping rooftop terrace encircles the master suite, a study and a reading area, each enjoying privileged views of the landscape. Featuring a jacuzzi, yoga deck, sunbathing areas and planted gardens, the rooftop is conceived as a space for both retreat and contemplation. Linking these levels is perhaps the house’s most striking feature: an exterior hanging staircase. Composed of a slender metallic frame with mesh treads suspended from a fine grid of steel rods, it appears to hover in midair, offering an ethereal counterpoint to the concrete mass.

Inside, the ethos of “brutalist honesty” continues with exposed concrete surfaces and sculptural cast-in-situ volumes that integrate built-in furnishings. Natural wood cladding introduces warmth, wrapping staircases and lining walls to soften the material palette while reinforcing the connection to nature. Terrazzo floors in the communal areas provide continuity, their speckled surfaces grounding the interiors in a tactile calm. Minimalist in its aesthetic, the design pays homage to the surrounding landscape via expansive glazing frames views of the desert mountains, allowing light and shadow to animate the interiors throughout the day. The result is a home that balances austerity and intimacy, its meditative character defined as much by what it withholds as by what it reveals.

More than a house on a hill, Brutal Honesty is a sculptural negotiation between architecture and terrain, a bastion of concrete that embraces rather than dominates the site it has been built on. In OF. Studio’s hands, Brutalism becomes less about severity than sincerity, revealing itself without any embellishment, while leaving room for poetry to take root.